Rope-A-Dope
by Spikey44
Summary: What-If story where Diego is an undercover cop pretending to be a Vigilante in order to bring down the mob. After the Vanya-pocalypse is resolved, Diego's mission is complicated by meddling siblings and accidental amendments to the timeline that mean none of the siblings lives are quite what they used to be. Shenanigans ensue. TV show verse.


**Rope-A-Dope**

Prologue: June 3rd 2013 – The Proposition That Changes Everything

June 3rd 2013:

Diego Hargreeves slides down the door until he's sprawled on the floor of his room in the boarding house. His hands shake and his mouth is dry. There's a ringing in his ears like he's just woken from a knockout blow in the ring. Nothing feels quite real. The room in front of his eyes blurs and swims. He could be concussed.

It would be easier if he was.

Six years of work. Six years of taking any job he could find, - including, memorably - an eight month stint with the _Flash-Bang Boys_ as the Wednesday night 'Variety Act'. (Generally speaking Diego would very much like not to remember those Wednesday nights. G-strings pinch and so, apparently, do handsy forty-year-old housewives after too many margaritas. He lives in terror that there's a video of him in nothing but a knife belt circulating somewhere.)

The point is, he scrimped and saved, worked his ass off (and everything else) for the money to go to community college and get the sixty credits he needed to be eligible for the police academy.

Another five and half months of cadet training; lectures on statutes and procedure he damn well knows don't mean much in the real world. The one where innocent people die when you hesitate. The one where _you_ die if you blink, or show an ounce of weakness. Five months were he pushed through the slow dawning horror as he realised that most cops are more interested in filling out expense forms and competing over how many traffic violation fines they can collect than in keeping the streets safe.

Five and half months plus six and half years of the whole world telling him his experience didn't matter, that being exceptional means being singled out as something that doesn't fit and isn't wanted. Of learning that the world wants to crush him, mould him, control him. Where it's conform or die.

(If it wasn't for the lack of knee socks, weird gramophone recordings over breakfast, and an English accent to go with the constant putdowns, he'd almost think he'd never left home at all.)

But he dealt with it.

He kept his mouth shut (mostly). He crammed for the tests. He spent the required hours at the range (even know he is better with a knife than any cop with a gun) because this was what he'd worked for since leaving the Academy at seventeen with nothing but a hundred bucks, a suitcase full of knives and the determination that somehow, someway all this shit would be worth it one day. He was going to save lives.

Hours, weeks and months of slow grinding taunts and jibes, and he took 'em all; took 'em in like he was some kind of pacifist Buddhist monk and adversity was his personal road to Nirvana. He took up yoga. He practiced restraint like he was training for an Olympic gold in it. He thought about learning Ikebana because he heard it elevated the consciousness and he really needed a high that wouldn't come with a possession charge. He was the 'bigger man' like Patch told him to be (over and over again until her words were white noise in his ears. Adding to the tension headache that just would not quit.)

And you know what? It didn't matter. It was never going to matter because _this_ was as inevitable as the 'entirely avoidable' fatalities instructor Gerant claims he and his siblings caused on their missions.

He maybe could've lasted out. He survived seventeen years under the same roof as Luther. He survived Dad. But then cadet Colliard - big, blond, teeth like a freaking horse –decided to make a crack about his family.

Colliard claimed the Umbrella Academy was a fake. Diego and his siblings weren't really Sir Reginald's adopted kids at all; they were actors. Ben's death was a publicity stunt gone wrong and none of what Diego _lived through _under his father's roof was real.

Diego remembers lifting Ben's limp body. He remembers how he and Luther carried their brother away from the scene past an endless line of press, Allison and Klaus trailing behind, barely holding each other up. He remembers the utter silence in the house for days afterward. He remembers the silence broken by Klaus screaming and screaming "No, no, no. Not You!' until they had to sedate him. He remembers their father, standing in the entranceway while Mom wheeled Ben's body away on a gurney, lecturing them on their failure as team.

He remembers that Luther locked himself away in his bedroom for three days. That he had to kick the door in because he wouldn't come out to eat. He remembers that the big idiot was still in his uniform. Ben's blood dried to flaking on his hands.

He remembers that the sound of Vanya's violin made him want to punch his fist through the wall. (So he did, which got him a trip to the infirmary, a splint and a lecture from Dad about 'rendering himself incapable' should the team need him).

He remembers staring at one of the fucking hideous portraits of Five, a half drunk bottle of tequila in his good hand wondering which of them would be next. Realising that it was either him or Klaus, because Allison could probably rumour her way out of death and Luther would march over all their corpses if Dad ordered him too.

He broke Colliard's face.

Then he showed him just how real all those hours of training were. With exacting precision, he demonstrated everything he learned in seventeen years as Sir Reginald's property, if not his kid. For the coup-de-grace, he left Colliard pinned to the wall of the gym with a fistful of blades driven through his clothes and deep enough into the drywall it took two attending EMTs, Greene and Santiago to pry him loose.

He also got himself expelled.

Seven years, give or take, of single-minded effort and he blew it.

He doesn't know what to do now. He doesn't have a contingency plan. He doesn't have a plan period.

He sits on the floor of the room he can't afford to pay for if he's not going to be drawing a rookie's pay check and stares into the magnitude of his fuck up.

He tried so hard and he failed and he can fucking hear Sir Reginald's sneer; his father's complete and total lack of surprise that yet again, Number Two has failed to measure up.

The knock on the door is an unpleasant surprise -and not just because he's leaning against it. He scrambles up, knife in hand and stares.

"Hargreeves, it's Ortega. Open up."

Raymond Ortega was the only instructor in the police academy he respected, the only one who lived up to his ideal of what a cop should be. The man was tough but fair; he didn't give Diego shit for his childhood, but he didn't spare him when he screwed up. Diego doesn't know what he's doing here now. It makes no sense.

He opens the door.

Ortega, short, dark, broad and perpetually annoyed rolls his eyes, "Put the knife down, Hargreeves," he scoffs. "And come with me."

Diego hesitantly lowers his arm. "Am I under arrest?" he asks. He should be. What he did to Colliard goes way beyond assault and into the realms of battery.

Ortega rolls his eyes again. "You should be. But no. Let's take a walk. I have a proposition for you."

"What?" Diego balks. He received plenty of propositions when he was with the _Flash-Bang Boys_. He honestly hadn't thought Ortega the type.

"I'm giving you another chance Hargreeves," Ortega says patiently. "You can walk with me and hear what I'm offering, or you can stay here feeling sorry for yourself. Choice is yours."

Another chance. The words ring in Diego's ears. He still doesn't understand but he knows what opportunity sounds like when she comes knocking. He also knows that whatever Ortega has in mind he is absolutely desperate enough to agree. He gets the feeling Ortega does too.

"You're a loose cannon Hargreeves," Ortega tells him as they stroll casually (mock casually in Diego's case) through a dog park. "Truth is, if we could've found a reason to bar your entry into the academy we would have. No one wants you on the force."

Diego is too tired to bristle at the truth. "Yeah well," he mumbles. "You don't have to worry about that now."

"Maybe," Ortega says and there's something in his voice that makes Diego's heart skip a beat.

"You can't follow a chain of command; you think you're better than the rules. You're impulsive and violent and not nearly as smart as you think you are," Ortega continues and Diego's hopes die even as his temper flares.

Did Ortega come all the way to his place, drag him out here, feed him a tiny morsel of hope just to drag him on his flaws? What the hell?

"But," Ortega says, "You also have initiative. You're observant and quick on your feet. You enjoy a challenge and you have persistence and you don't give in. You have actual experience in a firefight and combat training most cops don't."

Diego knows all this. He still doesn't see where Ortega's going with this. He's spent the last five months listening to instructors tell him that his combat training is incompatible with police training in de-escalation and that his initiative is 'insubordination'.

"The truth is," Ortega says. "I think it would be a waste to toss you loose; you're not the sort to go live a quiet life. You'll either end up dead or looking out at the precinct from the other side of the bars. So I'm offering you a third option."

They stop walking. The park is quiet and all Diego can hear is the pulse in his ears until Ortega starts speaking again.

"I already talked to Chief Hennessey. We need undercover operatives; guys like you who can operate in moral grey areas without back up. Prove to me you can toe the line and follow _my _orders and I can get you on the force."

Diego doesn't hesitate. He doesn't waste time asking clarifying questions.

"I'm in," he says, "whatever it is, I can do it."

Ortega doesn't smile but there's a gleam in his eyes, something that seems a little like triumph. Diego doesn't worry about it. Ortega is throwing him a lifeline. He's going to take it. He'll deal with the fallout the way he deals with everything else, fists up and knives out, hoping for the best.


End file.
